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Comcast has hired former Cisco executive Ken Klaer to the position of senior vice president, premises technology where he will lead the cable operator’s customer premise equipment team. Klaer’s hiring filled the gap from Steve Reynolds’ departure from the same role last year to become CTO of what later became Imagine Communications.

The three hardware platforms do all touch “endpoints” in a network, and could all, presumably, be used by any single network operator, so to that end, Cisco is lumping them all together in what it’s calling its Elastic Access portfolio. The software to manage them all is called Virtualized Elastic Access management.

Oesterling will further develop and scale Clearleap’s engineering and operational processes and systems, while assisting in managing the company’s global expansion. He will also lead recruiting efforts for technology professionals. Clearleap last November raised $20 million. The company said it plans to add 150 new employees this year.

Liberty Media said it is spinning off its cable and broadband properties into a new publicly traded company that will be called Liberty Broadband. At the same time, the company also said it bought 897,000 shares of Charter for $124.5 million, giving it a 26.4 percent beneficial ownership of Charter’s equity.

The chief executive of one of the nation's largest providers of the Internet's backbone on Thursday blamed cable giant Comcast for a slowdown in Netflix streaming traffic over the last two years. Cogent Communications Group Inc. CEO Dave Schaeffer made the comments at a congressional hearing about Comcast's proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable Inc. on Thursday.

Netflix is raising its Internet video prices by $1 per month for new customers and giving its current U.S. subscribers a two-year break from the higher rates. The changes mean anyone signing up for Netflix's video subscription service beginning Friday will pay $9 per month for in the U.S.

Bright House Networks recently launched a centralized Web page that was designed to better serve its subscribers with disabilities. The “accessibility” Web page provides information on the cable operator’s products and services for disabled customers and their families including hearing/speech, mobility, vision, and assistive offerings.

The first phase of C Spire’s fiber initiative will see the rapid home broadband deployed in nine Mississippi cities: Batesville, Clinton, Corinth, Hattiesburg, Horn Lake, McComb, Quitman, Ridgeland and Starkville. C Spire anticipates laying 4,600 miles of fiber optic infrastructure and spending millions to finish the first steps of the project.

Comcast has launched its cloud DVR and live in-home streaming service in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. The live in-home streaming part of the service was rolled out in the San Francisco area in the middle of last month with the network DVR element to follow.

ATX Networks is dropping the license-based model for selling transcoders with the launch of its new VersAtivePro transcoding platform. The company said its goal with VersAtivePro is to make it the most budget-friendly solution in the professional quality transcoder market.

The Olympics are staying on NBC in the United States through 2032 in a record $7.75 billion deal that cut out rival networks and seals the long-term financial security of the IOC. In a stunning, pre-emptive deal negotiated secretly over six months, the International Olympic Committee awarded the exclusive U.S. broadcast rights to NBC on Wednesday for an additional six games.

With the birth of AT&T’s new app for babies, users will be covered by apps from the cradle to the grave. AT&T’s BabyFirst’s U-verse app allows kids to create images on iPhone and iPad devices. From there they can see their handiwork on TV screens that are tuned to the BabyFirst channel.

The video market has been saturated for years, and the broadband market is nearly so. It’s been years since cable operators could grow through market penetration. The story these days is market share and average revenue per unit (ARPU). By those measures, Cablevision did well during its first quarter.

Comcast-owned thePlatform announced this morning that co-founder Ian Blaine was leaving his CEO post effective June 20 to move into a strategic advisor role with the white-label video publishing company. The Seattle-based company is replacing Blaine internally with co-CEOs Marty Roberts, its current head of sales and marketing, and COO and CFO Jamie Miller.

Cable, pursuing a Wi-Fi based wireless strategy, is enthusiastic about having the FCC open up more unlicensed spectrum in the 600 MHz Band. FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the Commission needs to be creative about finding room for unlicensed spectrum in that band, while protecting incumbent services.